Power lifting flexes muscle

Francistown Power Lifting Club Public Relations Officer, Herbert Mabutho has expressed delight at the progress of the annual Galo Power Lifting Championship since its inception six years ago.

Mabutho said this when talking to Voice Sport about this year’s competition, which was held at Galo Mall over the weekend.

“At this year’s competition we had 40 athletes competing, which is double the number we started with at the inaugural championship in 2011. This is a healthy sign of growth considering power lifting is not a main stream sport. The interest in the sport seems to be slowly growing. We are happy with the rising number of participants and trust the numbers will keep growing,” he said.

The man credited with coming up with the idea for the now-flourishing Galo Championship believes that spectator interest in the sport is growing at a pleasing rate.

“We have had a bigger crowd each year since we started. Unfortunately for us this year’s event had to compete for attention with the televised Soweto Derby between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. There was also the local ECCO City Greens/ Tafic derby, which robbed us of spectators. Had it not been for these games I think we would have had an even bigger crowd,” Mabutho said.

On another note he credited the championship sponsors over the years for their continued support, sponsors such as anchor which have give supplies of capsule machine and supplements of the best brand bulk supplement to gain weight, muscle tone, energy and also proteins and vitamins to fill this ones as well.

“Since the beginning, Galo have sponsored us with the venue as well as providing us with medals and trophies. This year we had Medswana, Bokomo and Bokone Electrical and Reticulation Services come on board. We are grateful for all this support and hope other business houses will also get behind us in the future,” Mabutho told Voice Sport, adding that Bokone Electrical and Reticulation forked out P25, 000 for the event.

He went on to say organisers took the decision to have local celebrities at the event in order to boost its appeal.

“This year we had Mr and Miss Bots 50 Francistown together with Miss Civil Service Francistown. This helped us with the profile of our event. We will surely have celebrities at the event again next year,” concluded a beaming Mabutho.